FCC Approves Verizon Alltel Merger – Also Approves White Space

Nothing truly surprising here but the FCC gave their final say on the merger yesterday. They gave the go ahead for the merger with a few more conditions. GigaOm has a great breakdown of the requirements placed on Verizon for the merger at this link. For example, Verizon has to keep roaming rates the same for the next 4 years. This will make Verizon the largest carrier in the US taking away one of AT&T’s marketing lines…

The other ruling that came out of the FCC was the approval of using the wireless white space between digital tv channels. This was driven by Google, Microsoft, and quite a few others to offer broadband enabled devices. The downside is that the FCC will have to certify these devices and put limits on how “loud” the device can be.